The Rhubarb Meets the Strawberries 


Jim reflects for the first time on a true love of his: old fashioned cooking. 

I made Strawberry/Rhubarb Conserve today. I got the idea from a wonderful book by Dee Dee Stovel, Picnic. I just adapted the recipe by substituting half rhubarb/half strawberry for the full rhubarb amount. It couldn't have been easier. Last night I chopped up the rhubarb, strawberries, an orange and a lemon and put them in a stainless steel pot along with enough sugar and a handful of raisins and nuts. I got up early this morning and cooked this mixture for about 20 minutes. I also loaded my canning pot with empty glass jars and lids and sterilized them. When the mixture was cooked enough, I put it in the glass jars and put the caps and lids on, snug but not tight, and gave them a water bath for 20 minutes. They are cooling now.

Every year I can and preserve a few things, and it is just part of my general orientation to our daily bread of the physical variety. Preserving and cooking food is an art that I enjoy. Last year I made French Mustard Pickles, Black Walnut/Plum Conserve, and Tomato/Apple Marmalade. I took the first two recipes from the pages of Favorite Recipes of America: Vegetables, 1970. It was published by Favorite Recipes Press and is out of print, so far as I know, although I found one of the volumes, the dessert one, used on Amazon.

But why am I, a guy, doing this?

It goes back to my family when I was growing up. We all cooked, although my dad never ventured into the canning arena, except to provide mom with the bushels of tomatoes and pecks of green beans. But I was fortunate to live the first eleven years of my life with Eva Noe, my great grandmother, the daughter of german immigrants, Abraham and Margaretha Mueller Fickeisen. She lived half of her life on farms on Pleasant Ridge and Washington Bottom in the Mid-Ohio Valley. My mom left school in the depression to help her mother, Clara, and her grandmother, Eva, survive. To these people and their forebearers, canning and preserving food was a way of life. And it wasn't just because it was necessary, and it was necessary. It was part of the art of their life.

I am no reactionary person who wants to return to past ways. I love modern life and technology and revel in the advances of the human race. But that old way of life that those people had was both painful and wonderful. Cooking and canning was part of the art of their living. They knew exactly what they were eating, what was in it, where it came from, and how it was going to taste. And taste it did! My great grandmother canned for other people to make a little income or create a positive barter situation for her family. No one could make pies like my grandmother, Clara. Mom used to say that it was just a knack. And my mother, well, almost every day she made a "good" breakfast, packed us or bought us a lunch, and fixed a full dinner for the family, all the while doing all the cleaning and house maintenance and working in our grocery store. She also kept the books for many years.

Those years in the kitchen while mom was canning and grandmother was baking, those were fun times. The neighbors dropped in to gossip and play cards. In a way, our whole life was centered around food, with the grocery store and the cooking and canning. We did watch TV and go to the drive-in theatre, but our idea of relaxing was sitting out on the front porch watching life go on down Greene Street. No air conditioner cooled our house in the summer.

It's almost laughable now how far people will go to avoid cooking. I can tell you that most of my friends wouldn't be caught dead cooking a meal for me. Always we eat out. In fact, I can scarcely get people to do anything unless it's planned around a meal out. It's really not too hard to put a decent, attractive affordable lunch on the table for four people. I can make any three out of the four—soup, sandwiches, fruit, salad—in ten minutes. I do it every day for Stephen and me. I can make breakfast muffins and sausage in 25 minutes, less if I plan ahead. And, of course, because I do want to see some of my friends, I will go out and spend the $35-$60 that it takes for two to eat out. But, being retired, that may come to an end sometime in the future.

Well, I don't really want to turn this into a rant, so, turning back, I'm just saying that cooking is one of my big connections to a lovely family lifestyle, a connection to my beloved past, a way that I bring artistry into everyday things, a way that I give to other people. If you choose to spend your time differently, of course, that's fine. But old-fashioned cooking is not such a bad idea, and neither was old-fashioned living. I'm glad I can bring it into the present from time to time. 

Posted: Thu - June 15, 2006 at 08:57 AM          

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